WHIT A BRITISH ENGINEER SAW IN BURMAH.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1520, 19 February 1886, Page 3

WHIT A BRITISH ENGINEER SAW IN BURMAH.

It was my heavy task to do with the crop-destroy in? Irrawaddy what Canute admitted his inability to do with the sea; in other words, I was told oft' to construct an embankment against a river that destroyed on an average one crop in every three. I had 16 000 Burmese working for me, men, women and children. The embankment was seventy miles; the swollen river would have run over it had it been less than twenty feet high, and would have whirled it into the plain if its base had not been a hundred feet broad. Then we could only work by snatches even in the dry months, and not at all during the long and dreary wet season. My workpeople returned to their home for the wet months, but I stayed on to that our fouadation was not washed awav.

My best labourers were the wom<>n. Thp mass of them were not from Briiish Burmah, but slaves of the King of Kings, the Burmese of the highlands. If there is to he fighting it is from these that the King of Burmah will draw his army. Had they their own way I am quite certain that there would be no war.

I have paid that ray workpeople returned to their homes during the wet Beacon. There was no option in ♦he matter; they h»d to do it, The King take* a fatherly interest in them, and sees that thev pay for it if they desert him. His favourite method is to keep hostages, and my labourers had to leave their families in his hands before they came to me. Had they f ailed to render an account of themselves by the stipulated time, the hostages would have been given over to the State, and, if the King desired it, trampled to death by the elephant, which in Burmah discharges the duties of public executioner. Out of every rupee I paid my laboureri, part had to be laid aside for the King. The Burmese smoke to a man, to a woman, I might almost say to a child. I was physioian-in-chief to those under me, and I soon learned to rely upon it that when a patient gave up smoking, he or she was really ill. The Burmese l »dieß have a very peculiar cigar-case, But there are two objections to its becoming popular here, of which the lt*sn important is that each cigar-case hol.'i only one cigar. And then the eigai-case is the lady's ear. Instead of wearing ordinary earrings, the Burmese women have a large hole in their ears and wear a cheroot in it till wanted. The really great advantage of this cigar-case is that it is never left behind. The men would think it beneath their dignity to carry cheroots in this manner, but they do not mind helping themselves from the wife's case. When the King of Kings wants to keep his women folk together or to puniflh them, he strlugs them, so to speak, by the ear. A long cane is passed through the holes made for cheroots, a dozen women or even more cane. —St James Gazette